


Unbend

by Anonymous



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Chance Meetings, Community: xover_exchange, Crossover, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan Pevensie, having just lost her entire family in a fateful train crash, makes a most surprising acquaintance in Godric's Hollow, as they take the first step toward healing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unbend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbit_eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hobbit_eyes).



> Written for xover_exchange 2011. Spoilers through Last Battle and Deathly Hallows.
> 
> Prompt: Fandoms: Harry Potter/Narnia, Scenario: Even though World War 2 is over and everyone else is celebrating, Susan Pevensie and Albus Dumbledore are still consumed by loss. Neither thinks there is anyone else who could understand what they’ve been through, but when Susan is sent to stay with relatives in Godric’s Hollow, could a chance meeting set them both on the path to recovery?
> 
> When I saw this prompt I knew immediately that I had no choice but to write it. I wish I could say this was a labor of love, but the birthing process was predictably painful. Thanks ever so much to the fantastic Kitty for the quick beta, for prodding me gently in the right direction, and for listening patiently while I cursed Albus Dumbledore and all his ancestors for being so damnably difficult to write.
> 
> The title is taken from a Boris Pesternak poem, 'Do not fret, do not cry, do not tax...'

On this particular morning Susan woke up, put on her nylons and dress, brushed out her pin curls, applied her foundation and lipstick, and - finally feeling that she might have enough layers barricading herself from the rest of the world to face it - joined her distantly-related great-aunt and -uncle in the kitchen for breakfast. Aunt Eunice remarked in glowing terms, as she did every morning, how beautiful she looked. Uncle Hubert excused himself partway through the meal to tell the boy calling at the door - today it was Jimmy, she could tell from his slight lisp as he asked after her - that she was still feeling too unwell to receive visitors. She helped Aunt Eunice carry the dishes to the sink ("It won't hurt to let them sit for a while, darling - come on, now, we have a train to catch.") then fetched her travel bag and joined Uncle Hubert in the car.

At the station Uncle Hubert shook her hand formally, saying, as he did the previous night as well as the one before that, that the fresh air and room to breathe would do wonders for her constitution. Aunt Eunice then grabbed her unceremoniously and squeezed, leaving her - between her plump arms and expansive bosom - rather no room to breathe whatsoever. She told her, as she had said every day since she began her stay, that she - being Aunt Eunice - was "so sorry," and she - being Susan - was "so fortunate" she had not been there to greet her parents at the train station when the... incident... occurred.

No, Susan wanted to scream, there was nothing fortunate about what happened. There was no serendipity in her decision to go on a date with her beau at the time and join her family for dinner afterwards. That she lived while her entire family had died was no sign that she lead a charmed life.

Instead, she graciously thanked her distant great-aunt and -uncle for their kind words and hospitality, for one need not be properly sincere to be proper. She boarded the train and - though she felt so empty inside she wanted to crumple in upon herself - sat straight-backed as ever, crossing her ankles for lack of anything else to do with them. One's bearing, she reminded herself necessarily, reflects upon one's ~~people~~ character.

So it was that Susan Pevensie arrived in Godric's Hollow.

\---

The gate swings shut behind Susan with a firm snick, and she is finally ensconced within the quietude of the graveyard. Though it is likely naught but her imagination that makes the sounds of talk and laughter drifting down the street from the pub seem to suddenly dim, it is welcome nonetheless. These new distant relatives she has been shunted on are a commonly acknowledged "queer sort" who are at turns estranged from and subsequently reintegrated back into the family's good books due to family politics Susan has no desire to understand. They are bright and brash and positively dripping with sympathy, and Susan found all too quickly that she was full to the brim and fit to burst with the sympathy of other people. She begged leave and beat a polite but hasty retreat as soon as was proper.

She finds herself wandering along a slightly meandering gravelly path, past Leopold Abbot (husband, father, 1821-1876), Brunello and Marietta Cavendish (in death do we reunite), Cody Bathoe (beloved, April 27 - October 15, 1901). She wrenches her gaze away from the latter grave marker, and it comes to rest on a man in a corner of the plot, not too far from where she stands, who she had not seen from the entrance to the graveyard. He has a startlingly long shock of grey hair, although the weight bowing his shoulders does not seem to be age, but grief. He holds in his hands a wreath of flowers ~~she did not see him holding a second before~~ which he bends to place before a grave marker. It is solemn and intimate and Susan returns her gaze to the path before her before she can intrude further.

The largest headstones cluster toward the center of the small plot, and Susan makes her way toward them. One towers above the rest, an ornate sculpted angel sitting atop it, wings raised and tips pointed toward the sky, cracked and chipped by time and weather. The grave marker next to it seems dwarfed by its presence, but it is to this one which Susan feels drawn. The blank white eyes of a marble lion perched atop it lock with her own, and she reaches out to touch it reverently. She stands there, fingertips to time-ravaged mane, and blinks back tears stinging the corners of her eyes, careful not to think too hard as to their cause. ~~Dreams she still has of hot breath and golden fur that wake her gently at first, then leave her shudderingly empty as consciousness returns~~.

The dates on the stone have been worn to the point of unreadability, but she bends closer to make out the name -

LUCY

\- takes three dismayed steps backwards, finds resistance in the shape of a stone bench against the back of her calves, and collapses onto it, whole body juddering with wracking sobs unaccompanied by tears.

She hasn't had the energy to cry since the first time after she received the news.

When she is quite well and done with all of that, she wipes away the slight dampness around her eyes and puts herself back together again. She straightens, then turns to face the man who is ever so carefully taking a seat on the far end of the bench.

"I didn't mean to intrude," he says, looking rather like that is exactly what he intended, although his smile is apologetic and his eyes ~~(lion-eyes)~~ are kind.

"Quite all right," Susan says, feeling threateningly close to tears once again.

"Albus Dumbledore," he introduces himself. Susan proffers her hand, the gesture quickly aborted into a handshake so quickly it might pass unseen.

"Susan Pevensie."

"You don't live here?" It sounds like a question, but it isn't.

"I'm visiting family."

"Ah." His hands disappear somewhere into his robes - she had not noted earlier that he was wearing such because they were not so different from those worn by ~~the Calormen~~ her Aunt Chrysantha and Uncle Astrophel when they picked her up from the train station - and emerge forthwith holding a small drawstring bag. "Lemon drop?"

"Thank you, no."

He pops one into his own mouth, and the bag disappears back into his garments with a brief flurry of motion. "School has let out for summer holidays, so I've returned for a visit to my old hometown."

"You're a professor?"

"I am indeed." Before Susan can ask what it is that he teaches, he leans forward to read the name on the gravestone in front of her. "Ah, Lucy. A relative of yours?"

"Oh!" Susan says, less a reply than a sudden release of air. "No. Well, yes. Not her." Susan fists her hands in her skirt, clenching so tightly her knuckles turn white. "My younger sister."

"Did it happen recently?"

"About a month since."

"I'm terribly sorry."

Susan bows her head, letting her hair fall forward to veil her face. Dumbledore continues, "Sometimes I find it comforting to think of death not as a conclusion, but as a new beginning. The next great adventure."

Susan looks up sharply. "You find such empty platitudes comforting?"

She regrets snapping at the man immediately. Once upon a time, she had been able to carry on empty chat for hours. The trick is to speak of nothing of great import, such as marriage suits, religion, ~~trade embargoes, foreign alliances,~~ or deaths in the family. A calm demeanor and serene smile is key in controlling the conversation, while the hint of a mischievous smirk may slip through whenever one wishes to smooth over a change in topic. Susan had been the resident expert on such things for quite a time, and now she feels she has lost the skill completely.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. "I lost my entire family that day. Both my parents, two cousins, and my three - " she chokes on her sentence, "all three of my siblings."

She stares down at her lap once more, unwilling to watch the dawning horror and sympathy on his face, as she has seen on so many others. She cannot take any more sympathy. "Sometimes I feel that it was actually me who died that day."

"There's a piece of you that left with them that you'll never get back," he says. Susan looks up in surprise and he nods toward the graves he had been visiting. "My mother and sister, Arianna. I lost them both the same summer."

Susan swallows hard. "Were you close?"

"No," he says, quietly.

"You wish you could go back in time so you could tell them you're sorry, and that you love them."

"Yes, always." He faces her, eyes distant like he's seeing right through her head and staring at something unseeable on the other side. It lasts just a moment, then his eyes snap to focus sharply on her own. "It's not your fault," he says.

Susan sniffles a bit and nods. "I think someday I can believe that. It's not yours either."

He smiles wearily, looking old enough to match his grey hair and beard since the first time she saw him. "Maybe," he says.

It was always Peter of all of them who took it upon himself to shoulder everyone's burdens: Edmund's, Lucy's, ~~the entire kingdom's,~~ Father's. In the end, there was no one left but her to share Peter's burdens: to assure him that he was doing well, he was not letting anyone down, he was just as brave and strong as he needed to be and no more. But, no, Peter hadn't truly confided in her in a year, at least. It was mother for whom she had always been there, wasn't it? She'd been there while she voiced her concerns about Edmund's violent outbursts at school, or that Grandma Mary wouldn't live to see her son return from the war; then there was the unspoken but always deeply felt fear that father wouldn't return from the war at all. One day Susan's mother had confided that she couldn't shake the feeling that one day Peter and Edmund and Lucy had woken up completely different people: perfectly decent people, but strangers nonetheless. "Not you, though, Su. You've always been my beautiful, kind girl." Susan had patted her shoulder and mumbled reassuring nothings. Later that night, she stuck her head out the window, gulping in mercifully fresh, cold air, and swallowed down the scream that was bottled up inside her. Nobody ever knew how much strength it takes to be gentle.

Were Susan facing this kind-eyed old man at some other point in her life, perhaps she would want to share his burdens. At this moment, however, she is still laden with her own, and there is still more that he has not told her, she can tell.

To be perfectly fair, she has not told him so much of her story either.

"Do you believe in the unexplainable?" she asks. "Magic, I suppose. Wardrobes open to reveal entire worlds inside them, paintings that move, centaurs, animals that are more human than beast?" ~~And make the dearest of friends.~~ "My siblings did, every one of them."

"I myself have always believed in magic," Dumbledore says, nodding as he looks at her as if he's figured something out. "You'll find that many here in Godric's Hollow do, in fact. Perhaps that is something you ought to ask your relatives about."

"I fear that in my haste to grow up as quickly as possible and leave such foolish nonsense behind me, I sacrificed any chance to salvage my relationship with my siblings."

"Growing up is nothing more than the process of becoming more wise. Youthfulness need not be sacrificed at its expense. In fact, I have occasionally found this to be the exact opposite of what is needed."

"I thought I was being ever so adult and clever, but I was so stupid," Susan whispers. "I didn't realize what was truly important in my life."

"We cannot learn if we start out knowing everything," Dumbledore says. "As enticing as the idea of a faultless life is, it isn't the sign of having truly lived."

"Are you going to tell me to learn from my mistakes?" Susan asks.

"Yes I am. It's an empty platitude, but true, for what else can you do?"

Susan nods, and looks toward the Dumbledore gravesite. "Are they your biggest mistake?"

Dumbledore sighs long and low. "No," he says. "That would be a dear friend from my youth." He smiles slightly, the gesture pained and turned inward. "It's a rather long story. Nobody would understand, I'm afraid."

"No," Susan agrees. "Nobody would understand." She falls silent, listening to the slight breeze as it cards through her hair, bringing with it the chirping of birds sitting on the fence, the filtered talk and laughter from the center square, the mournful lowing of cows from a field outside the village.

Dumbledore clears his throat at last. "I believe it is now approaching suppertime."

Susan leaps to her feet with a surprised startle. "I must excuse myself, then, that being the case. It would be terribly impolite of me to miss supper after my relatives so graciously offered to let me stay with them." She offers her hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Dumbledore."

He stands and shakes her hand, smiling warmly. "Likewise, Ms. Pevensie. You know, very occasionally a student of mine will teach me more in a couple of years than I have managed to gather in my entire life. I believe I would have loved to teach you."

"I believe I would have loved to learn from you," Susan replies. "I shall see you around."


End file.
